Wireless users will be carrying ever more devices with them, evolving to the era of hyperconnectivity, in which the number of devices connected to communication networks and the internet will exceed the number of persons by several orders of magnitude; e.g., it is predicted that every person may carry 50-60 devices in a few years time. This phenomenon is also known as “The internet of things”. Wireless communication technology is essential for this. Although the hyperconnected world is extremely powerful in its conception, on the road towards it serious hurdles are put by the capabilities of radio-based wireless technologies. Wireless data rates, supported by subsequent standards, have shown impressive growth in the recent past; FIG. 1 shows how data rates have doubled each 18 months in the past decennia. With present radio techniques, this trend cannot be sustained, and radio techniques will reach their physical limits as the radio spectrum gets overcrowded and wireless devices start interfering with each other as the radio emission patterns will overlap. Radio beam steering by means of smart segmented antennas may alleviate this interference, but radio technologies do not allow tight confinement of the beams. Furthermore, due to the radiated fields which propagate as (part of) an extending sphere, the attenuation factor increases with the square of the distance, thus limiting their reach.
Another reach-limiting factor is the atmospheric absorption of radio frequencies, aggravated by e.g. humidity.
What is needed is a wireless system that overcomes the radio technique barriers.